


Electricity and Tears

by Calacious



Series: Mirrors [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Amnesia, Electrocution, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hope, Love, M/M, recovery from torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 10:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: Danny remembers something, and Steve is there to help him through it.





	Electricity and Tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IreneClaire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneClaire/gifts).



> There seems to be a bit of growth in this particular ficlet. I am merely letting the muse guide me as I write this month (Camp NaNoWriMo, and the last break of my school year, which ends at the end of June, with the next year starting on July 1st). 
> 
> I discovered, after writing this, that there is something called body memory. I have known about emotional therapy dogs, because I have a friend who has one (he's a wonderful dog that I get the pleasure of watching every now and again). I think that Danny could benefit from one in this. Steve possibly as well.

_Electricity is sharp and burns through the veins, gets stuck in the bones and makes you bite your own tongue until you choke on blood._

_It’s terrifying. His body stiffens, back arches, and he can feel the surge of electricity all the way to the very ends of his hair._

_It hurts._

_He can’t breathe._

_He tastes the copper of blood and then it ends and yet it doesn’t. He can still feel the currents of electricity in his body, shorting out his thoughts, making his muscles spasm._

_And then it starts again, and stops, and starts, and he loses track of time, muscles a quivering mess, body wet with piss and blood, dried saliva making the corners of his mouth crack and bleed._

“Danny?” Steve’s voice is an anchor and a buoy. It grounds him and keeps him afloat, pulls him back from the brink of terror. It reminds him that he’s alive, that there’s more to life than pain and nothingness.

“What are you thinking about?” Steve asks.

Searching Steve’s eyes, Danny relaxes when he sees that there’s nothing hidden there, that Steve isn’t testing him, that he won’t strike out at Danny if he answers wrong.

He shrugs, doesn’t pull back or flinch when Steve leans closer and takes hold of his hand, stilling the scrabbling of his fingers in their bed sheets, which are cool and silky, nothing like the cold, wet concrete he sometimes remembers when his mind casts back to the time before memory.

Speaking is difficult and his head already hurts from the onslaught of images and body memories that he doesn’t fully understand. They’re like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and, in spite of what his doctor said about how putting puzzles together would help him, Danny doesn’t like them one bit. He wonders if he ever did. Steve’s told him that he used to be a detective. A regular Sherlock Holmes. So maybe puzzles _were_ his thing, but now they just frustrate him and make him want to put his fist through a wall.

“Did you remember something?” Steve’s voice is carefully neutral, his thumb stills in the rhythmic pattern that he’s tracing on Danny’s scarred wrists.

Danny feels detached, like there’s a part of him that’s stuck on the other side of a mirror — just a mere reflection of this person who knows what it feels like to be electrocuted, and what it feels like to be held in the arms of another man and cherished, rather than burned and scarred, left in a dark, damp hole praying for death.

“Dunno, maybe.” Danny squints at Steve, wonders if he’ll pull back now, if Danny’s faulty memory, his lack of speech, will tilt the scales against him. If Steve will call him out on his lie and leave him. He hasn’t yet, but there’s always time for that.

“Maybe we should look into what Dr. Paige suggested,” Steve says, letting the subject drop, thumb resuming skating over Danny’s wrist in a soothing figure eight pattern that Danny’s come to associate with something that might be happiness, or contentment, or some other big word that means something more than safety and comfort.

Danny closes his eyes, thinks back to the last time he saw the doctor. Some day of the week that he can’t put a name to. They all blend together in a rush of sound bites, colors, and disjointed pictures and thoughts.

“Getting a therapy dog.” Steve fills in the blanks for Danny, helps him put words to the sound bites, memories to the pictures and thoughts, order to the puzzle of his mind.

Frowning, Danny opens his eyes. Steve’s looking at him with affection and hope, and Danny relaxes, leans up to press a kiss to Steve’s parted lips and smiles when the kiss is reciprocated.

“Electricity,” Danny says once they’ve pulled back, earning an almost comical frown from Steve before a look of realization crosses his face.

“You _did_ remember something.” Steve’s voice is soft, not demanding. He doesn’t ask for more answers, or for Danny to put words to the body memory.

Nodding, Danny rests his head against Steve’s chest, takes comfort in the steady beat of the man’s heart. This way, he can’t see Steve’s eyes, won’t be drawn into the reflection of him that’s mirrored there. Won’t see what Steve might really think of him. Won’t see disappointment warring with compassion.

Steve puts his chin on top of Danny’s head, tucks him in close to his body, legs wrapped around legs, arms around Danny’s back, and his fingers trail up and down Danny’s neck, thumb along his collarbone.

‘This is better than any therapy dog could do,’ Danny thinks as he clings to Steve and sinks down into the warmth of the man that he thinks he loves.

Cocooned in Steve’s warmth, Danny lets go and cries for the first time in his memory, though he doesn’t know why. And to his credit, Steve lets him.


End file.
